A Framework to Preserve Indigenous Archive Stories in South Africa

Introduction

This chapter assessed role of the South Africa provincial archives on providing education using indigenous archives. The provision of education is dependent on the well preserved archives materials. Hence, it is the responsible of provincial archives to ensure that framework is available to preserve indigenous archives. There is a move by archival science to recognize indigenous archives on education curriculum development (Nicholls et al., 2016). It is necessary to conduct such research because limited studies on indigenous archives. Indigenous history is a growing area of interest and often-overlooked research.

This chapter assessed the role of the South Africa Provincial Archives' on preservation of indigenous archives with the purpose to document cultural heritage collection to aid curriculum development. Developing, maintaining, and preserving indigenous history held by provincial archives cannot be managed in a piecemeal way within one community or sector. The South Africa provincial archives mandate include collection or document records of significance. The collected archives materials may be used for education purposes. The archives is committed to the collection of indigenous history to redress the past apartheid injustice.This is so because the state archives did not fully collected indigenous archives materials. Hence, The Provincial archive's mandate included collection of indigenous archives. The collection of indigenous archives is an important gesture to collect previously ignored archival materials. The indigenous archives history is part of South African history education. This is so because indigenous knowledge of the community is not fully archived by the Provincial Archives. The provincial archives need to preserve their history and culture to be recognized in the education sector. Assessing social, political, and economic processes within the province of South Africa builds relations between society and space in education during the post-apartheid.

The Basic Education department used an archival collection to develop curriculum. However, there is a lack of indigenous archives preserved by the archives institutions in South Africa. This posed a challenge for the Department of Basic Education in South Africa to develop a curriculum based on archival materials. The primary education curriculum reviewed include a syllabus on indigenous history. The South African education curriculum was based on western technologies, structures, and forms of western knowledge and communications systems. This statement is alluded to by Elkaleh (2019, p. 1123) who indicated high inclusion of Western theories in the education system.

The apartheid government ensured that records pertaining marginalized indigenous knowledge, tradition, history, and culture were not preserved in the state archives. The apartheid education system did not recognize indigenous history in curriculum design. Indigenous history to be recognized during education transformation. This can be achieved by raising indigenous awareness. Decolonization of education can be achieved through inclusion of indigenous history in the primary education curriculum. This statement is alluded to by (Styres 2019 p. 32) who said that decolonization requires developing a consciousness about the realities of oppression and social inequalities for indigenous people. Critical discourse is necessary to design an education curriculum based on indigenous archives materials. It appears that there was inequality and marginalization caused by the apartheid system. The indigenous history of indigenous people was marginalized. The researcher observes that Indigenous people are under-represented in South African education curriculum development.

South Africa's Education system is an object of postcolonialism based on Eurocentric discourses and practices (Rizvi, Lingard, & Lavia, 2006 P 257). The western education system reflects and reinforces a privileging of western voices and narratives over indigenous ones. The education curriculum needs to be based on recognition of the diversity of indigenous archives and the significance of oral memory and associated traditions